Devolving

This first poem I'm posting is actually one that I originally wrote in 2000.   One of my favorite things to do with a poem I've written is to go back over it about a gazillion times and remove as many words I can, so this is it's final incarnation, (unless a future reading inspires even more editing).  My inspiration for that, of course comes from William Carlos Williams' The Red Wheelbarrow.  /it is so spare, and yet the imagery is so crisp, and his word choice is genius. My work is nowhere is as brilliant obviously, but this style is inspired by that.


Devolving

i never asked you
if you could love me
took for granted
that you couldn't
perhaps you wouldn't
which didn't bother me
not really
i liked how things were
fixed
unchanging
didn't want the truth from you
never asked to hear it
still
you told me
now things are changing
evolving
perhaps devolving
as i ponder the man
who said that
ignorance is bliss
i assume he must
have had someone
like you
in his heart
and in his head

Anyone Still Out There?

I have always wanted to be a writer. I've written poetry since I was in grade school, short stories, essays...especially essays, and journaling of course.  After a friend I loved dearly died far too young, I hit a wall of writer's block that I only have ever periodically came out of.  That was 13 years ago.  Writer's block, frankly, sucks.  I have posted here, obviously, and have written a couple of poems here and there, but nothing with the frequency that I had before...

My blogging has always been part of the effort to break through the wall that somehow keeps me from putting the words in my head on paper correctly.  It hasn't been all that successful, obviously.  I recently realized that some of the reason it's been so difficult is that being funny became more important than what the words in my head were.  And being bat shit crazy, there's a lot of funny stuff in there.  But being bat shit crazy with more baggage than a drag queen on a pleasure cruise means there's a lot of dark shit, too.  I've been put in, and put myself in, very bad places in my life and it's left it's mark on, and not writing that is holding me back.

I've written some stuff over the last few months the past few months that I'll be polishing up and publishing over the next few weeks, trying to blog at least three times a week, at least one of those a poem.  And I'll try to limit the music posts, but I have great musical tastes, and if you are only hurting yourself if you don't at least check it out.

On that note...tonight's music comes from Amanda Palmer.  I have connected with her music in a way I never thought possible after reading some of the things she has said in interviews.  This song kills me, and I'm considering getting this chorus as a tattoo:

That's just me, so take me or leave me
But please don't need me, don't need me to need you to need me
Because we're here a moment the next we're dead
So love me or leave me but try not to need me.


Go forth and listen, gentle reader...